A milkshake and plate of fries was set in front of me. I eyed it with the sort of lust a parched man eyes a glass of water after being in the desert for a few days. Sugar and artery clogging grease, two of the tastiest food groups.
I took the spoon and dipped it in the shake. It was so thick that a straw wouldn’t cut it. You needed the spoon until the milkshake melted a little.
I closed my eyes in bliss at the first taste. Thank God being a vampire hadn’t robbed me of this. I don’t know what I would have done if I never tasted peanut butter and chocolate and fries again. Life would have been a lot bleaker.
A figure stood beside me when I opened my eyes. I started and nearly upended a spoonful of shake into my lap.
I looked up. Liam. Speak of the lying devil.
I should have let Jerry fire me.
He watched me with an inscrutable expression.
I frowned, unwilling to offer him a seat. There was a chance he wasn’t here to meet with me. Maybe he’d been passing by for some other reason, saw me and stopped in to apologize for stringing me along and promising to teach me a little more about what it means to be vampire. Stranger things have happened.
He sat across from me.
Damn. I’d really hoped this had just been a crazy coincidence.
Liam always reminded me a little of a dragon, one that hadn’t been fully tamed. Fierce, proud and more than a little dangerous. He looked perfectly capable of having a civil conversation with someone, right before incinerating them where they stood so he could enjoy their perfectly cooked remains as a tasty snack.
He appeared to be in his early thirties, though I suspected he was hundreds of years older than that. He was attractive if you could get past the crappy personality that made you just want to punch him in the face while screaming ‘you’re not the boss of me.’
With dark brown hair cut short above his ears, cheek bones that could cut glass and lips that practically begged to be kissed, he’d probably starred in many a woman’s fantasies. He was a chick magnet, no doubt, but I preferred my men to be a little less capable of world annihilation.
I took a fry and dipped it in my milkshake, waiting for him to speak. In the slight chance that he wasn’t my client and had only sat down to nag me about joining a clan, I wasn’t going to give him any clues. Jerry took confidentiality very seriously, and I didn’t want Liam to stick around to get a glimpse of the person I was supposed to meet.
I ate several more fries in the same way. The silence stretched between us as he watched behind a bland mask.
The minutes dragged on.
Maybe I should say something, if only to speed this along.
No. I didn’t care, remember? Not about anything he had to say. Unless he was here as a client, in which case I did care, but only from the standpoint of my job.
He’d had his chance to press the vampire agenda. He went MIA instead. In the end that told me all I needed to know.
“I should apologize,” he finally said.
I arched an eyebrow. “Oh? For what?”
He gave me a look that said that I knew perfectly well for what.
I gave him a sickly sweet smile that said I had no idea what he was talking about.
I’d learned during our previous meeting that Liam was very good at managing his facial expressions. You had to pay very close attention to the micro expressions to have even a small clue as to what was going on behind his electric blue eyes.
There was a slight tightening at the corner of his mouth that I read as annoyance or maybe regret. Naw, had to be annoyance.
“I meant what I put in that note. I have every intention of furthering our acquaintance and teaching you the basics of what you need to know.”
“How indulgent of you.”
“Business elsewhere required my attention.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Ok. No big deal.”
It wasn’t either. Yes, he’d said he’d help me. Yes, I was kind of counting on that help, but in the end it didn’t matter. He had other things to do; I’d moved on. Yes, possibly not in the best direction since I had a book capable of moving itself from one room to another, but I’d take that over a possible indentured service to the vampires any day of the week.
